About 6,400 students in Quang Binh province had to take the literature test of the high school entrance exam once again several days ago.

Prior to that, students took a literature test on June 3 but some parents and students discovered that the questions of the entrance exam were similar to the second-semester test questions from the Dong Hoi district sub-department for the 2018-2019 academic year.

The similarities of the two tests’ questions were unfair for students. Students in Dong Hoi district are believed to have axbigger advantage over students from other schools because they had solved the questions once before.

Finally, the Quang Binh Education & Training Department had to release a decision on organizing the entrance once again, though it caused many consequences: the exam costs the local authorities more money, while students have to spend more time to review lessons for the exam.

A local newspaper reported that a female student failed to attend the second exam just because she did not receive information about the exam and was late to the examination compound. The student kneeled and begged for the right to attend the exam again.

In fact, the similarities of exam questions are not occassional. A high school teacher in Hanoi affirmed that it is not difficult to find the exam questions which are ‘surprisingly’ similar to each other. The exam questions of one province may be exactly the same as the exam questions of another province, while the questions of a semester-end test may be similar to that of a competition for excellent students.

“This is because of the lack of creativity in education. When designing exam questions, teachers may re-use the questions of an exam in the past, or they simply use the questions raised in textbooks,” the teacher explained.

Giao Duc Viet Nam newspaper has found a lot of similar exam questions.

The literature test for the high school entrance exam in Nghe An was exactly the same as the second-semester test questions raised by the Yen Thanh Education sub-department in the 2018-2019 academic year.

The math questions of the high school entrance exam in Quang Ngai province have similarities with the mock exam questions of Nguyen Ba Loan Secondary School.

“They (teachers) are lazy to think and show creativity,” the high school teacher in Hanoi said.

“Teachers are required to submit yearly working plans and you can see the content of the plans is nearly the same. The only difference is the name and the school,” he said.

Kim Chi

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